


Remnants

by Batwynn



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, FrostIron - Freeform, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-20
Updated: 2013-09-20
Packaged: 2017-12-27 03:31:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/973794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batwynn/pseuds/Batwynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr Prompt: After a lifetime together, Tony dies and Loki keeps his arc reactor. What does he do with it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remnants

**Author's Note:**

> Unedited.

> Prompt: After a lifetime together, Tony dies and Loki keeps his arc reactor. What does he do with it?

> * * *

**Remnants**

* * *

**  
**   


He had been gone for six months already. Three of those months were spent trying to find him. Mid October, Natasha had sent Loki a messaged that simply read, “I’ve found him. He’s gone.”

Loki read it a million times, trying to switch the words around so it made sense. Maybe Natasha was on his trail but missed him. Maybe she meant he left again after they met. He spent hours denying it until Thor arrived and stole him away. Loki hated flying with Thor’s hammer, but for once he didn’t have the heart to complain. Loki vaguely acknowledged the Russian signs they passed before they landed in a large, snow covered field. After they separated, Thor stood a moment, his face tilted to the stars. Loki watched in silence as his brother’s steaming breath melted the few straggling snow flakes that fell. Thor was never this quiet.

That was moment Loki knew.

  
He screamed wordlessly at his brother, startling the god from his quiet moment. Loki fell backwards into the snow, putting his arms up over to face as if to protect himself from something.

Thor approached him carefully, finally finding his words.   
“Brother…Brother, you must calm down.”

Catching his breath, Loki let out another harsh scream, sending several crows into the air from the trees nearby. His body curled into the snow, welcoming the numbing cold it offered. He screamed until there was no more air left, till his mouth filled with snow.

Thor lifted him in his arms as easily as he would a child. Loki fell silent as his older brother crossed the field with him in his arms. Any other day, any other moment, Loki would have felt embarrassed. At this this moment, for the first time in his life, he felt fully grateful to his brother. Not one ounce of guilt, no flickers of doubt.

As they approached a cabin, Loki began to struggle in his brother’s arms. He started to beg, whimper, and claw his way over Thor’s shoulder.   
“No. No no no no. No, stop. Just stop. I do not need this. No!”

He crawled further over his brothers shoulder, only to be held tightly in his grip.  
Loki continued to desperately beg.  
“Thor. T-Thor. No! NO! I will NOT go in there! I cannot. No!” His voice lowered into a whimper. ” Please…Please ,please no…”

  
Thor pulled him from his shoulders and held Loki in front of him. The younger god barely managed to stand, his body automatically pressing away from the cabin.

Thor smiled with a sadness that stayed with him for many years.   
“Loki…brother, be brave. Today of all days, be at your bravest.”

Loki stared into his brother’s blue eyes and silently begged. Thor waited in silence, not forcing his brother any further. At last, Loki turned towards the door and stared at it.

His voice came from far away.  
“Why here? Why..” Loki faltered, taking a step forward. “, why was he here?”

Thor answered quietly, “There is a message from him, for you.”  
  
A soft keening sound escaped Loki’s lips before he stumbled forward and opened the door.

* * *

 

Inside the cabin was no warmer than outside. There was a lamp lit on the table, showing small signs that people had been there before him. Deep marks in the dust that touched upon everything there. He found his body rocking back and forth slightly, all control lost.

He glared around at the objects of the room, muttering to himself.   
“This is a lie. A trick. Why would he be here?”

Why did he leave?

Loki felt him, long before he saw him. His eyes refused to look in the direction of the small cot in the corner. He felt death, something familiar to him after all these years. Loki wondered idly if his daughter had been the one to see him off.   
Shaking his head, he turned his attention to the cot at last. His body moved on its own as if to satisfy its some unknown morbid curiosity.

It was a simple cot made of weak wood. There was barely a mattress left under the body. Loki refused to look at it, instead focusing on the blanket that lay half off the bed. It was brown and thin, hardly worth calling a blanket. His gaze finally wrenched its way over to the face that barely peaked out from behind the thin covering.

Loki suddenly started to babble.   
“You lier! Lies…utter…useless. I don’t believe you for a second you..bastard…” He choked the last words out as tears finally began to fall.

* * *

 

Even in a week, a body changes. He had been dead for a week, frozen in the little cabin in the middle of Russia. His lips were a slight shade of blue, reminding Loki for a sickening moment of his own blue lips. His closed eyes were sunken slightly, shadows long apparent beneath them. Loki could see the dark lines that had crawled up his neck from somewhere beneath the blanket.   
Finding bravery somewhere inside of him, he pulled the blanket down gently to look.

  
He recalls screaming again, and then nothing more. Several days later, he finally read the message left behind. It was short and full of the man’s usual tone. That is, until the last few sentences. Loki ran his fingers over the words, feeling every dent in the paper where the pen pressed a little harder. He brought the paper to his face and breathed in carefully, finding even the smell of ink a comfort.

The paper crumpled against his face, his hands clutching it tighter and tighter.

"You _idiot_."

* * *

 

It took a month for Russia to allow the body to be shipped from their country. There had been a very tense moment where Loki had nearly started a war. Everything was too complicated for him to handle at the moment and Natasha almost let him do it. Loki imagined the Hulk smashing the man’s face, if only Bruce had still been alive. The captain stepped in at the last moment and did something none of them expected. It was the first and last time any of them saw Steve get that angry. If he hadn’t, Loki was sure it would have been a much longer wait.

* * *

 

His fingers curled around the cold metal, finding the familiar contours over and over again. Loki sat in a room that no longer smelled like him. He sat on the bed that was no longer warmed by him. Loki sat and gently ran his fingers around the circular object in his hand.

This is all that is left of him. This single broken part, this abomination. Loki tensed, his hand curling into a fist, ready to throw the damned thing out the window. Let it fall twenty floors and shatter on the street.

"You would hate that, wouldn’t you?" Loki asked the air. He laughed with no humor before returning to glare once more at the object, feeling his magic enter it like a vacuum. The thing started to glow just as it used to, absorbing the god’s magic. A moment later it was running on its own. It no longer had a purpose, yet it awoke again so easily. Loki stared at it for a long while, before he smiled. He turned and faced the window, gingerly holding the metal object between his hands ceremoniously.   
Suddenly, his hands flashed around it at an unnatural speed.

  
The arch reactor slowly sank into Loki’s chest with a burning sensation. His body began to absorb the energy, the metal and glass disintegrating into mere particles. Humming with the power, a warmth grew from his chest out to every finger, every strand of hair. He smiled once again as the reactor began to do its work, the magnet's strangth reverberating throughout his body.   
The feeling reminiscent of that powerful pull that called him into the arms of Tony Stark all those years ago.

 


End file.
